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I’ve learned to embrace winter since I moved to Fort Nelson almost 15 years ago. When I say embrace, what I mean is to make the best of it. If there’s snow you may as well enjoy it, otherwise it’s going to be a long 6-7 months of winter.

Fort Nelson is a great community, but it doesn’t have a perfect outdoor winter recreation infrastructure as this is mostly looked after by volunteer groups and face it, they all have full-time day jobs too. Because of this, we’ve learned to adapt to conditions and get creative. When it’s been snowing constantly and it’s just too deep to ski, we put on the snowshoes, when it’s warmer than minus 30C and the trails are packed well, we put on the skate skis or cross-country skis.

Or like on Saturday, while we were running in a rural agricultural area on a quiet road, my friend Lori made a brilliant observation. “Do you know what I’m thinking?” she asked. That could mean anything and likely something completely random considering we were on a run and had lots of fresh air. She finished her question/statement by stating how perfect this road would be for skate skiing. Here is a perfect example of northern creativity. We don’t have access to perfectly groomed trails where you can skate ski whenever you want, but we find opportunities to skate ski all the time. Last year we took advantage of the trails the sled dog races created (best skiing ever) and this year we are taking advantage of this road with a perfect amount of fresh snow over a perfect snow-pack.

Living in the north has its challenges. You can focus on those or you can focus on all the positives such as: very few traffic jams, short line-ups, amazing outdoor recreational opportunities we don’t have to share with very many people, driving 5 minutes to get anywhere around town including the ski trails, and getting to take your dog to all these places (even off leash). You just can’t beat that!

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